The Dark Tower (2017)

“The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.”

One of the most iconic sentences written by Stephen King, and there are plenty, is included in the cinematic release of The Dark Tower. The movie has plenty of great visuals that tie into the written saga of the The Dark Tower and are exciting to see represented on film. There are a lot of story elements taken from the novels and comic books, characters, places, titles, and locations; but this is a different story than we have seen, or read, before.

This is what I would attribute the negative reactions towards the film to. The film tries to play the middle ground, put enough in the story for fans to recognize but also cater to the mainstream audience and play it safe with the story. This is a dangerous idea that rarely pays off. If you are going to commit to a movie as intricate and beloved as The Dark Tower, you’d better commit to appeasing the hard core fans. If you don’t have them in your, you have nothing. Imagine if while creating the Game of Thrones HBO series, the producers hadn’t followed the source material and had tried to play it safe, thinking the audience wouldn’t want to see dragons and sorcery? That series would have died quickly, it is seeing the source material on screen that people fell in love with. The Dark Tower should have followed suit.

I enjoyed The Dark Tower movie and I think that it has potential to open up a whole new universe of stories that people have been enjoying for decades now. I hope that the idea of having TV shows and sequel movies to continue this story is able to come to fruition as time goes on. But, I did feel short changed as I left the theater, knowing that the source material is so rich and has so much to draw on. However, I am willing to see where this goes and give The Dark Tower another chance.

I would give this movie a B as I enjoyed the visuals and the opportunity to see these characters on screen for the first time.